Hearts legend John Robertson admits struggles with mental health during pandemic

The 56-year-old hasn’t seen his children in 11 months and has yet to meet a granddaughter born in November last year. The added stress of looking after a squad of players during these unprecedented times has also had an impact on the head coach.

He told STV Sport: “This has been, without doubt, the hardest year to manage.

“First and foremost, as a manager, my concern is my players’ health and wellbeing. As a manager you deal with a lot of things, fallouts with their partners, financial problems, their car breaking down, a million and one things. Add all that together and then throw in a pandemic that threatens peoples lives, it’s very, very difficult.

“Some of the lads we have here are from England and haven’t seen their families for ten months. I haven’t seen my own children for ten months. My granddaughter was born in November and I haven’t seen her. That’s the same for everybody but we all get on with it.”

The record Hearts league goalscorer admits he’s considered his position at the Championship club and whether he wants “to keep going”.

He added: “It’s been difficult and I have been very, very down at times. I struggled with my own mental health because you have all these added pressures to deal with.

“I try to help my players but who helps me? I’m lucky that I’ve got a great relationship with the board and CEO here and we have various chats from time to time.

“But there’s been half a dozen times where I’ve felt really down and questioned whether I want to keep going. It’s just been so hard when you see what’s happening in the world.

“But you go again. It doesn’t last very long, but I would be a liar to say it’s not affected me because it has. You find this inner strength as a manager to keep working hard and make sure your players are ok.”

Robertson’s ICT side are set to face Raith Rovers this weekend though the match is in doubt after a Covid-19 outbreak in the Raith camp.

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